-Caveat Lector-
> American Values in Dire Straits
> by Bevin Chu
> Taipei, Taiwan (ROC)
> Special to Antiwar.com
> 8/10/99
>
>
>
> High anxiety in the Taiwan Straits following Republic of China
> (ROC) President Lee Teng-hui's "two nations" challenge to the
> People's Republic of China raises the question: How should
> patriotic Americans respond to the Taipei-Beijing confrontation?
>
> The answer is: Americans who revere our heritage of freedom and
> independence must have the courage to defy 1990's political
> correctness and uphold core American values – by politely but
> firmly refusing to intervene, regardless of one's sympathies.
>
> As George Washington stated in his Farewell Address of 1796: "The
> Great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign Nations is in
> extending our commercial relations to have with them as little
> political connection as possible. . . . ‘Tis our true policy to
> steer clear of permanent Alliances, with any portion of the
> foreign World."
>
> Condensing Washington's 18th century idioms into bumper
> sticker-ese: "trade with either, side with neither."
>
> Meanwhile, the Taiwan Relations Act, which should have gone the
> way of the Berlin Wall, is exactly the kind of pernicious
> "permanent Alliance" with a "portion of the foreign World" the
> Father of our Country urged us to steer clear of.
>
> Washington was hardly alone. His resolute opposition to foreign
> intervention was shared by all the Founders. Neither he nor the
> other Founders intended any exceptions to be made for Kosovo or
> Taiwan.
>
> As James Madison put it, "it has been the true glory of the
> United States,” in “fulfilling their neutral obligations with the
> most scrupulous impartiality . . . to maintain sincere neutrality
> toward belligerent nations,” and “to exclude foreign intrigues
> and foreign partialities." Thomas Jefferson concurred, declaring
> that the foreign policy of a free society has to mean “Peace,
> commerce, and honest friendship, with all nations – entangling
> alliances with none." "Our first and fundamental maxim should be,
> never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe." Ditto Asia.
>
> As John Quincy Adams, author of the Monroe Doctrine put it,
> "America... does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.
> She is well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is
> the champion and vindicator only of her own."
>
> Why exactly were the Founding Fathers so unanimously and
> unambiguously opposed to "proactively" exporting American values
> beyond our shores? Did they not want liberty to prevail all over
> the world, not just in America? What was their problem anyway?
> Were they too shortsighted or selfish, as the nomenklatura of the
> New World Order seem to imply, to understand the value of "making
> the world safe for democracy?"
>
> The answer to all these questions is a resounding "No." The
> Founding Fathers were cultured cosmopolitans who devoutly hoped
> that liberty would triumph the world over. And no, their foreign
> policy prescriptions have not been rendered obsolete by jet
> travel and the Internet, because their soundness was not
> predicated on specific technologies. Rather, their strategic
> vision was grounded solidly in their grasp of fundamental human
> nature, which has evolved little since 1796, however we might
> wish otherwise.
>
> The Founders, powdered wigs and all, were infinitely more "hip"
> than we give them credit for, and understood something our smug
> modern politicians do not. They understood that to yield to the
> powerful temptation to "do good" abroad carries an enormously
> expensive and hidden price tag: the loss of our own liberty at
> home.
>
> They understood that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts
> absolutely," that handing the political class the power they
> demand to impose "benevolent global hegemony" on the rest of the
> world permits them to impose a malevolent domestic dictatorship
> on Americans at home.
>
> They understood, as too many well-intentioned Americans today do
> not, that once we compromise the safeguards against domestic
> tyranny written into our own system of law, no matter how
> compelling the rationale, we will rapidly cease to be the nation
> others once considered worth emulating. We would instead soon
> resemble the very nations we so confidently set out to "reform"
> and "enlighten."
>
> Chiang Kai-shek's Taiwan, along with South Korea and West
> Germany, demonstrated capitalism's clear superiority to
> socialism. Democratic reformer Chiang Ching-kuo's Taiwan, which
> witnessed the repeal of martial law and the enfranchisement of
> "native" Taiwanese, demonstrated that economic reforms are the
> harbinger of political reforms.
>
> Lee Teng-hui's "New Taiwan" on the other hand, demonstrates that
> "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Lee Teng-hui is a
> corrupt Marcos/Duvalier-style petty despot who has shredded
> Taiwan's Constitution, modeled by ROC Founding Father Sun Yat-sen
> on our own American Constitution. Acutely aware of China's
> susceptibility to backsliding into de facto monarchy, Sun took
> the added precaution of dividing the ROC government into five,
> not three branches. Not that it did any good. Lee Teng-hui, whom
> Newsweek gullibly anointed "Mr. Democracy," merely nullified all
> constitutional constraints on his executive powers in four stages
> over nine years, including the power of impeachment, and now
> simply does whatever he damned well pleases.
>
> Lee is an "elective monarch" who finances his personal dream of a
> "Republic of Taiwan" with hapless Taiwan taxpayers' dollars, even
> though the government's own surveys show that over 80% of the
> Taiwan people oppose Taiwan independence. Lee's headline grabbing
> offer of US$300 million in foreign aid to Kosovo was merely the
> latest in a string of outrages. Lee consulted no one, not even
> the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan's equivalent of our Congress,
> constitutionally charged with funding government.
>
> All three major broadcast television stations on Taiwan are owned
> by Lee Teng-hui's KMT party machine. So are several of the
> Chinese and the two leading English language newspapers. The
> pro-reunification opposition is banished to cable TV or "outlaw"
> radio, where they survive only if they do not criticize Mr.
> Democracy too harshly. A hilarious and popular "McLaughlin
> Group"-style panel show called Dianfu Xinwen ("Underground News")
> was forced off the air recently for making Lee look like a
> buffoon.
>
> The Founders adamantly opposed foreign entanglements even when
> they harbored no doubt whatever about the worthiness of foreign
> lobbyists' causes. Try to imagine the vehemence of their
> opposition to so-called Taiwan "independence" when the Taiwan
> separatist leadership's commitment to America's republican ideals
> is more than a little suspect?
>
> America, the "world's only remaining superpower," has troops
> stationed in 144 foreign nations around the globe. Today the sun
> never sets on the American Empire. Back home however, Posse
> Comitatus is a dead letter, and the smart weapons used against
> Saddam and Milosevic to "make the world safe for democracy" have
> been used to exterminate dissident parishioners of a rural Texas
> Protestant sect, including two dozen unarmed children. As John
> Quincy Adams warned, America has become "the dictatress of the
> world" but is "no longer... the ruler of her own spirit.” Our
> Founding Fathers' worst fears have come true.
>
> Americans must summon up the backbone to resist the moral
> guilt-tripping of the Gauleiters of the New World Order. We must
> uphold Madison's wise and principled admonition to exclude
> "foreign intrigues and foreign partialities" by staying the hell
> out of the ongoing Chinese Civil War in the Taiwan Straits in
> 1999, just as China refrained from siding with either the Union
> or the Confederacy during the American Civil War in 1861.
>
> As a first generation naturalized American I am all too aware
> that my patriotism is presumed suspect by many China-haters in
> Congress simply by virtue of my race and my national origin.
> Never mind that I am from Taiwan – that didn't help Lee Wen-ho –
> and currently live in Taipei. Never mind that my parents live in
> Taiwan too. Never mind that, like Joe Sobran and Jude Wanniski, I
> was a Cold Warrior slightly to the right of Richard Nixon. I know
> by advocating policies which appear "soft on communism" red flags
> (pun intended) will go up in the fevered minds of China Threat
> theorists determined to "go abroad in search of monsters to
> destroy."
>
> I could keep my mouth shut and my head down. But genuine
> patriotism demands that Americans defend the ideals of our
> Founding Fathers, and speak up for what is authentically
> American, and not meekly acquiesce, like "good Germans" or "good
> Japanese" in the 1930's, to the mainstream consensus while our
> nation continues its downward slide into imperial decadence.
>
> Americans must have the guts to flatly reject any attempts by
> foreign lobbyists, fellow travelers, and domestic politicians in
> the service or on the payroll of either Taipei or Beijing to draw
> America into what Washington termed "controversies, the causes of
> which are essentially foreign to our concerns.” We must do so
> without hesitation and without apology, because contrary to what
> is politically correct in 1999, unyielding adherence to James
> Madison's "most scrupulous impartiality" and "sincere neutrality"
> is the fullest and most genuine expression of enduring American
> values. It is late in the day, but not too late to save our
> republic.
>
> The author is an American architect of Chinese descent registered
> to practice in Texas. Currently living and working in Taiwan, Chu
> is the son of a retired high-ranking diplomat with the ROC
> government.
>From AntiWar.CoM
A<>E<>R
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